An African-American classics professor
who passes for white is suddenly accused of racism. Instead of revealing
his roots, he quits his job and eventually has an intense affair
with a trashy but truly hot cleaning lady.

"Silk
is played by Anthony Hopkins, and so we are offered the unique spectacle
of a Welshman playing a black American playing a white American
Jew. Moreover, Silks earlier selfmuch of the film flashes
back to his youth, in wartimeis played by Wentworth Miller,
a strong young actor who looks (a) tremulously handsome and (b)
nothing whatsoever like Anthony Hopkins just as we are struggling
with Hopkins, along comes Nicole Kidmanwhose willowy hauteur
is the crux of her appealas the supposedly rough and bedraggled
Faunia Farley, who toils as a cow milker and a college janitor,
and who takes Silk into her bed all we are left with, in essence,
is an unlikely love affair, performed by two actors so remorselessly
skilled that, by the end, you cant see the love for the skill."
--Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

" an honorable B+ term paper of a movie: sober, scrupulous
and earnestly respectful of its literary source The filmmakers
explicate Mr. Roth's themes with admirable clarity and care and
observe his characters with delicate fondness, but they cannot hope
to approximate the brilliance and rapacity of his voice, which holds
all the novel's disparate elements together the story fails
to cohere. Its people wander through a strangely artificial landscape,
and the ideas hover in the air above them like clouds painted on
a backdrop The film includes some sex, a boxing match and an
occasional burst of dancing, but most of the action consists of
two characters in a room talking The film's powerful individual
scenes seem like excerpts from a missing whole, well-appointed rooms
in a house whose beams and girders have been cut away." --A.O.
Scott, The New York Times

"Anthony Hopkins is surreally miscastand demonstrates
appropriate contempt with the laziest performance of an increasingly
tired (and tiresome) career Ed Harrisin crazy-making
trick eyeglassesis nearly as awful Perhaps under the
misapprehension that, as the biggest star, she must be playing the
central character, Nicole Kidman uses the unhappy Faunia to relentlessly
raise the decibel level Playing the young Coleman with the
requisite intelligence and ambiguity, Wentworth Miller contributes
the sole viable characterization so much so that, for those
unfamiliar with the book, the flashbacks in which he appears might
be set in an alternate universe." --J. Hoberman, The Village
Voice

"Bentons film is ungainly and overstuffednot to
mention miscast. Though the brooding, charismatic Hopkins mesmerizes,
hes not convincingly American or racially ambiguous, and he
doesnt mesh with Wentworth Miller, who plays Silk as a young
man. Kidman again demonstrates her versatility and gutsiness, but
her beauty is a distraction. I felt I was watching a movie star
slumming. Still, for all its shortcomings, The Human Stain
is an honorable, sometimes moving attempt, better at evoking the
poignancy of Silks autumnal affair than exploring the moral
ambiguities of his deception." --David Ansen, Newsweek

"How
does one even begin to list the imperfections of The Human
Stain? One can start with the sluggish direction, the misguided
casting, the tedious screenplay and the self-important story. Perhaps
the biggest blunder was in casting Nicole Kidman as an illiterate,
down-on-her-luck cleaning lady with a tough demeanor. That mistake
is followed closely by the decision to put Anthony Hopkins in the
lead role of a New Jersey-born professor whose secret identity makes
his casting all the more wrong-headed. (Maybe if he had managed
to drop his British accent, we could suspend our disbelief.)
the weirdest scene is one in which the unpleasant Faunia [Kidman]
shows her soft side: sharing an emotional moment with a caged crow.
Somehow she feels a connection to this blank-eyed bird and is moved
to tears when speaking to it. Something must have been lost in translation."
--Claudia Puig, USA Today

"One problem with The Human Stain is that Anthony
Hopkins doesn't look anything like Wentworth Miller, who plays him
as a young man. We simply have to accept the mismatch as a given,
and move on Hopkins makes our acceptance easier because he
is a fine actor, and involves us so directly in the character's
life that we forget about the technical details. Yes, we have
to suspend disbelief over the casting, but that's easier since we
can believe the stories of these people Here are complex, troubled,
flawed people, brave enough to breathe deeply and take one more
risk with their lives. -Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Even this limited treatment of Roth's themes and ideas touches
on more live-wire content than we're used to seeing in American
movies aside from reminding us that 1998 was the summer the
world fixated on Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Benton and his
screenwriter, Nicholas Meyer, attack Coleman's saga as a conventional
chamber drama.
What falls by the wayside is the rush of savage, subtle, often hilarious
perceptions that permeate every page of Roth's book Benton's
version of The Human Stain feels under-energized and
modest to a fault. Yet it still delivers a genuine sad sting."
--Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun

"Screenwriter Nicholas Meyer and director Robert Benton have
managed to make a compelling, sexy and often moving film out of
the The Human Stain. Paradoxically, they've done this
by emphasizing some of the weaker aspects of Roth's book -- in particular,
the plot line involving a murderously deranged Vietnam veteran --
and by abandoning both the book's humor and its deep anger at the
puritanical hysteria of both left and right. The result is a kind
of Douglas Sirk melodrama about racial passing -- a black man living
his life as a white man -- combined with a celebration of late or
intergenerational passion." --Jonathan Foreman, The New York
Post

"Coleman and Faunia are not only insufficiently drawn; theyre
miscast. Hopkins doesnt even bother to drop his British accent
while Kidmans idea of playing working-class is to get all
snarly and angular. The film keeps cutting back from the present
to the professors boyhood past, but Wentworth Miller, who
does a credible job as the young Coleman, bears almost no similarity
to Hopkins. And so we appear to be watching two disparate stories
periodically fused together The Human Stain isnt
a movie of ideas, and its too inert to be a probing character
study. No stain is left behind, just a wan watermark." --Peter
Rainer, New York Magazine

"Keep
an eye on Wentworth Miller (biracial himself) -- he's a sensational
new talent. As for Hopkins and Kidman, they are both as mesmerizing
as they are miscast. Kidman is too much the babe to pass as the
janitor with the inexpressive bone face, as Roth describes
her. But she makes Faunia's loneliness palpable. And if you can't
accept that Welshman Hopkins is an African-American from New Jersey,
there's no doubting his ability to locate the character's grit and
wounded grace. Why pretend? The Human Stain is heavy
going. It's the flashes of dramatic lightning that make it a trip
worth taking." --Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

"The best thing the movie has going for it is Kidman's performance.
What at first seems a bad case of movie-star slumming gradually
becomes a credible, powerful portrait of a bitter, damaged woman
in a bottomless spiritual crisis Hopkins is his usual, dominating
self, but there's no doubt that his good work is compromised by
the unfolding premise-shift; and Nicholas Meyer's adaptation is
too respectful of Roth to invent any touches that might make Hopkins'
casting a little more credible." --William Arnold, Seattle
Post-Intelligencer

"In condensing the lions share of Roths manifold
subplots and multiple antagonists into a cinematic frame of less
than two hours, the movie develops a restless, shifty rhythm wherein,
too often, only the storys most incendiary, polemical aspects
 the ones where you feel like Roth is chastising you from
some post-liberal, Jewish-intellectual Parnassus  come bubbling
up to the surface. Yet, there are saving graces. Though The
Human Stain is, in large part, brazenly miscast, Benton is
so good at playing to his actors strengths that he nearly
makes it all work... Wentworth Miller has a voice like polished
oak and pantherlike movements that exude a sleek self-confidence watching
him, neither the camera nor we in the audience can break his distant
yet hypnotizing gaze." --Scott Foundas, LA Weekly

"Nicole Kidman as a milkmaid leading a hardscrabble existence? That's
just one leap of faith you'll have to make in The Human Stain,
a prestige picture whose casting problems gum up the works There
is some linguistic but no physical resemblance between Hopkins and
Wentworth Miller, the dashing new face who plays Coleman's younger
self in flashbacks. What does the brash, sensual, angry young Coleman
possibly have in common with Hopkins' reticent geezer?" --Jami
Bernard, The New York Daily News

"The Human Stain falls victim to a fatal lack of
narrative drive, suspense and drama. Kidman and Hopkins are wrong
for their roles, and that, combined with a pervading inevitability,
cuts the film off from any sustained vitality. The result is something
admirable but lifeless When the patrician-looking Kidman, playing
a cleaning lady, rages about her white-trash life of tragedy and
degradation, there's no believing her, not for a second In
the same spirit, we watch Anthony Hopkins play an African American
passing as Jewish, even though he looks neither black nor Jewish
and doesn't even bother to sound American We experience The
Human Stain as a movie about Hopkins and Kidman kissing."
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

"So
utterly miscast as to send the movie toppling off into farce and
parody, the slim, elegant, beautiful, vulnerable actress plays what
marketing execs for cigarette companies once called the virile
woman -- working-class, tough, uneducated, sinewy, profane,
tattooed She's been beaten up a lot, by a bad man. She's lost
her kids in a terrible accident. Now she's a janitor. Nicole Kidman,
the janitor And here's the funny part -- that's only the second
most ridiculous casting trick in the film. The corker is Anthony
Hopkins, as an academic hotshot at the famous Athena College in
a town that should be called Snootleyville, Mass. I can give you
his name (Coleman Silk), his rank (dean) and his serial number (1)
but as to other matters, specifically origin, ethnicity, inner agenda,
moral bearings, history and destiny, I must remain mute. It's a
surprise. I can only say: You won't believe it All in all,
it's like a bachelor's apartment: a complete mess." --Stephen
Hunter, The Washington Post

"Mr. Benton and Mr. Meyer have been adroit enough in the choices
they have madewhat to include from the novel and what to exclude
and compressthat I feel emboldened to suggest that we are
more culturally enriched by the films existence than we would
have been if the film had never been made at all. In short, the
movie is fully worthy of the book, and will reach many people who
might not have enjoyed the delightful experience of gliding through
Mr. Roths trenchant and zestful prose on the human condition."
--Andrew Sarris, The New York Observer

"What's shattering is the utterly graceless way the book has
been adulterated, condensed, simplified and made rather pointless
by an inability to wrestle the material into filmable shape, cast
it correctly, or abandon any of the separate pieces of its considerable
narrative luggage. Everything in the book seems to be in the movie
-- and, at the same time, everything in the movie feels like prelude.
While you're waiting for the ideas to reach a point of coalescence,
or emotional catharsis, the credits are beginning to roll."
--John Anderson, Newsday